


Pieces

by readwriteonly



Series: Moments [6]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 14:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5970778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readwriteonly/pseuds/readwriteonly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fear started to seep in despite her best efforts and her heart began to race. Whoever they were, they weren't playing games, and worse they had made no effort to cover their faces. That they weren't worried about her identifying them later did not bode well at all.</p><p>If Max were here... but no, she'd never have been in this situation to start with if Max had been there, Max would have warned her, they could have avoided the alley or hidden, or...</p><p>But Max was gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces

Chloe shifted on the hard floor, trying to find a position that didn't put pressure on a bruise. It wasn't going well. Her hands were cuffed behind her, and a length of chain ran from the cuffs to wrap around an exposed piece of rebar.

The room had the look of a dilapidated basement somewhere. It was dim, with only a single lightbulb hanging in the middle of the room, and the rough brick walls were water stained. A few boxes lay in the corners, looking the worse for wear, and a single door led... somewhere.

Chloe wasn't sure how long she had been here. It had been midday when the vans had boxed her in an alley and three big, serious looking men grabbed her and spirited her away. She had fought, despite the shock, but they had simply picked her right up off her feet and manhandled her into the van. Then the needle, and darkness, then waking here.

She finally managed to wedge herself against the wall in a way that seemed to hurt the least.

She started looking around carefully, but the area in reach had been scrubbed clean. Chloe wasn't sure what a professional kidnapping looked like, but these guys had taken no chances with her.

The fear started to seep in despite her best efforts and her heart began to race. Whoever they were, they weren't playing games, and worse they had made no effort to cover their faces. That they weren't worried about her identifying them later did not bode well at all.

If Max were here... but no, she'd never have been in this situation to start with if Max had been there, Max would have warned her, they could have avoided the alley or hidden, or...

But Max was gone. 

The aftermath of the storm had been brutal on them both. Max was utterly exhausted and suffering from the trauma of seeing her friends hurt and killed in timeline after timeline. Chloe herself had been at breaking point, the shock of discovering Rachel's body, the terror of the storm and her horror as she realised she was the cause had left her reeling.

Chloe had felt like she was drowning, terror filling every piece of her even as she begged Max to end it. Then Max had ripped the photo up. Relief beyond words had filled her and the two girls had clung to each other as the storm broke across Arcadia Bay.

When they got back to the ruined town, Joyce was in a coma. Chloe got into a flaming row with David and had to be dragged out by an exhausted Max. She had decided then and there to bail on Arcadia Bay. 

Max came with her, but they couldn't hold it together. Chloe recognised now that she'd been full of guilt and, desperate to offload, had dumped it on Max's fragile shoulders with biting sarcasm followed by tearful apologies. Eventually she went too far, calling her a freak and a monster. Max, tears pouring down her face, had run out the door, and when Chloe finally got herself under control and went to look, she was nowhere to be found.

Chloe was snapped out of her reverie by the sound of a key turning in a lock. The door swung open with a groan and a tall, sharp-faced man in a suit walked in. He closed the door, then turned and looked at Chloe.

"I told you." he snarled, "I warned you to leave it alone, but you couldn't stop digging."

"Prescott!?"

It had been two months since that day. Forced to face her situation, Chloe had returned to Arcadia Bay and managed a rocky reconciliation with David. She had picked up a job at a local music store and David had taken on more work to help pay the medical bills as they waited for Joyce to come out of the coma, and spent her spare time trying to find any sign of Max.

But Joyce hadn't come out of it, and as weeks went by the medical costs started piling up. David came home late every night, exhausted, and left again early. Chloe started taking as many hours as she could. 

Then she heard the rumor. 

She was no longer sure who she heard it from first but every version was consistent in one fact: The Prescotts had known that the storm was coming, and they hadn't told anyone.

Chloe had seen a way out. If she could find evidence that they had known the storm was coming and failed to warn the town they could file a lawsuit, get damages and maybe get Joyce better treatment. She knew it was an incredibly long shot, but it gave her something to focus on in the nights when she couldn't sleep and the house felt so empty.

Somehow, Sean Prescott had found out what she was up to. She'd received anonymous messages late at night with angry threats. It had shaken her initially but she came to see them as a sign she was on the right track. She shrugged them off and kept digging. A week ago they had stopped and she had assumed he had given up trying to threaten her. So much for that.

"You should have left it alone Price, you should have left it alone, and you and that little bitch Caulfield should have left my boy alone."

"Nathan? That was Jeffers-"

"NO!". He strode across the room and slammed his hand across Chloe's face, sending her sprawling sideways into the floor. He grabbed her by the collar and hauled her up in front of him.

"I KNOW you were trying to shake him down, I KNOW. The two of you harassed him at every FUCKING turn, you pushed him over the edge, you DROVE him into the hands of that lunatic!"

His face was red and he was shaking with rage, he dropped Chloe and she sprawled awkwardly on the floor, her eyes wide with shock.

"I know what you did." he said more calmly. "I might have let it go, but you kept pushing your stupid nose in where it didn't belong. So now... now I don't have to. Now I can avenge my boy."

He opened his jacket and pulled out a handgun. Chloe went rigid with fear, then an image of Rachel's face flashed before her eyes and anger burst in her.

"FUCK YOU. Your psycho child killed Rachel! Jefferson was a fucking evil bastard but he did one good thing ridding the world of that worthless shit. And you, you ASSHOLE, YOU were why Nathan was so fucked up to start with! Go ahead, fucking shoot me, parent of the year!"

Sean roared and he struck her with the gun. She slammed against the wall with a scream and then fell to the ground.

"He should have been there, beside me, when the storm came." Sean said, his voice low. "I could have saved them, you know. Your mother and the others. Yes I knew the storm was coming, I've had a private research team for years, looking at climate change. They came to me last year talking about a trigger point in the ocean nearby where warm and cold currents meet. All it would take would be a tiny shift and then... a storm, almost out of nowhere. I could have warned the town, but why? it was a shithole full of deadbeats. I knew what to do, I built Pan Estates and I waited. Sure enough it came. It was going to be my triumph."

Chloe stared at him, blood running down her face.

"But then you robbed me, Chloe. You all robbed me of my son."

He stepped back and raised the gun. Chloe felt the fear wash through her again, like that night at the lighthouse. It set her trembling. She closed her eyes and an image came unbidden of Max, her lifeless body in a shallow grave as a storm raged.

"Max." she asked, "Did you kill Max?"

"Not yet."

A furious female voice snarled "Not ever, asshole".

Chloe's eyes snapped open. Max was striding forward from the corner, her left hand reaching out before her and her face twisted in rage. Sean turned and Chloe screamed as the gun went off, deafeningly loud, but the shot went wide and Max didn't stop.

"You did it. You caused all of this!"

The gun went off again and again the shot went wide. Chloe looked on stunned as the air around Max seemed to warp and boil.

"You brought nothing but pain and suffering!"

Max started yelling, her voice twisted by a strange reverb as if a dozen people were screaming along with her, slightly out of sync. Her furious words punctuated by Sean's increasingly desperate gunshots.

"EVERYTHING I was, EVERYONE I knew, my entire LIFE gone because of YOU!"

She took a final stride and Sean put the gun against her forehead and fired. The shot boomed out, Max seemed to flicker and the bullet slammed into the brick wall behind her.

Max reached out and Sean dropped the gun, turning to run. She caught it mid-air, then pointed it towards him.

The gun boomed one last time and Sean crashed into the door, then slid lifelessly to the ground.

Max dropped the gun on the floor, walked over to the body and lifted a set of keys from one of the pockets. She threw them next to Chloe. Chloe twisted herself around to reach them and started trying to fit them into the lock blind.

"SuperMax! that was ama-"

A sob startled her and she turned back to see Max on her knees in the middle of the room, hands clasped against her head. With all her rage extinguished Chloe suddenly realised how fragile Max looked, gaunt and pale, her clothing ragged.

"Chloe", she whispered, "you were right. I am a monster."

Chloe gasped as she saw the blood dripping from Max's nose, pooling on the floor.

"I don't know who I am anymore, I don't even know which Chloe you are. Everything is blurring together in my head."

The sound of shouts came from somewhere in the building. Chloe desperately started trying to get the key to fit as she talked.

"Max, no. I was wrong, utterly wrong. I was just angry at... at everything, and I lashed out. You're the best person I know Max, you care about everybody, and you've saved my life more times than I can count."

"I can't... you can't know, Chloe, you can't know what it's like, nobody can. Everything is uncertain, all the time. I can't seem to care about anything, or anyone."

She looked over at Sean Prescott's body.

"I just killed a man, Chloe, and I don't feel a thing. Not a thing."

"Max, it'll be alright".

The fear of death was receding but a new fear was filling Chloe. Max sounded utterly broken, and Chloe worried she would disappear like a ghost at any moment. Chloe wasn't willing to lose Max again, not ever. She managed to get the right key into the lock and started trying to turn it.

"Max listen, it's going to be ok, we just... we need to stay together. Max, look at me. I need you."

Max raised her head to look at Chloe. The combination of her gaunt face, tears and blood broke Chloe's heart.

"I don't-"

The door handle twisted and someone shoved it from the other side, but Sean's body was lying against it. Max crawled over to the gun and grabbed it, before standing shakily and turning to face the door. Chloe desperately shook the cuffs free as a voice shouted, and then the door was forced open.

Everything seemed to happen at once. Max pulled the trigger and the gun clicked dry. The man who came through the door swore and raised the gun he was holding towards Max, who raised her hand, then staggered and fell to her knees. Chloe screamed and threw herself forward as the muzzle flashed.

Suddenly everything was silent. Chloe stood, leaning forward, her left hand stretched out towards Max, who was facing a bullet slowly rotating in the air a foot away from her head. Max looked down at her own hand, lose at her side, then turned and stared at Chloe with wide eyes.


End file.
